Montana Articles

Pure, Unbridled Disappointment

12/22/2020

Update, from our president:

pic.twitter.com/v9Rdjz6DNu
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2020

I cannot begin to put into words how disappointed I am in our country, our government, and really, ourselves for letting this happen.

$900 billion is the latest stimulus/covid-relief bill.

$600 will be given to most Americans.

That’ll cost $200 billion, meaning the other $700 billion will be spent on pork.

The bill was over 5,000 pages long and many members of Congress are complaining that they didn’t have time to read what’s in it.

The bill was so large that it couldn’t be carried; a handcart was required.

The stimulus bill is so large that it cannot actually be physically carried
pic.twitter.com/OHiTmwNXH9
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 21, 2020

Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii made a great point. In her state, the $600 that people will get will only cover 25% of their rent.

So really...what good is it?

It’s a joke, and everyone knows it. When that $600 runs out...then what? Another stimulus bill? This latest one took 6 months, and it’s shit. It hurts our country more than it helps.

That $600 ain’t gonna last a week, everyone knows it.

What a joke.

So much money is going overseas. Pakistan gets $10 million for gender studies.

How does that help America? Who does it help? Who’s idea was it to put that in the bill, and why? How do they benefit?

Because I’m pretty certain that sending Pakistan $10 million isn’t related to covid at all, and I’m confident it won’t help a single struggling American.

God this makes me sick.

Our country is ruined. The US dollar is now worthless. Food prices are skyrocketing as inflation takes hold.

I cannot begin to tell you how disappointed I am.

I made $31,000 last year, and this year so far I've made $30,800...60% of which is unemployment.

How long can this continue?

I don't want the $600. I have a family of four, so we'll get $2,400.

I don't want it.

I want us to open back up and get back to normal, get this country back on track. But maybe it's too late.

I refuse to believe that.

I want to fight. I want to fight for this country and the future of my children.

It just doesn't seem like anyone else wants to.

What Recovery?

12/18/2020

Retail sales fell 1.1% last month.

It might not sound like a lot, but it’s the worst showing in 7 months...and right at what’s supposed to be the busiest shopping time of the year.

So much for a recovery. I think we’re in for a massive depression and, if inflation keeps going up, food riots.

Your idiots in local government, local media, and the local blogs? None of them seem to see this coming.

Do you really think we’re in the midst of a recovery? Because most of the major corporations don’t. Would Coke be laying off 12% of their US workforce if they thought good times were right around the corner?

Of course not. So what do they know that your local media and politicians do not?

I think it’s obvious - Coke is in the private sector and they can’t keep glossing over the numbers with taxpayer money like those in local government do.

They see the obvious - people are not spending money, even on simple and cheap things like a can of Coke. If they have money, they're saving it for the turbulent months ahead. But most simply have nothing anymore, and nothing left to lose.

At Coke, they can’t play with other people’s money...they actually have to go out and make it from nothing (and not the way the Fed does it).

Local politicians then take a portion of that money from Coke workers to pay their salaries and to usher in their pet projects.

Over the course of the next year, those politicians will have a lot less money to play around with because there are fewer Coke workers for them to tax so they can pay themselves and for their agenda.

New York is a fine example of this. In that city, tax revenues are already down 42% from last year, which amounts to a $1.2 billion loss.

What is the mayor there doing? He’s increasing property taxes by 4.6% to try and offset this, as if that’ll do anything more than drive more people out of the city. More than 300,000 have already left.

No cuts in services are coming for New York. I wonder how long that city can hang on, especially when they don’t get a federal bailout.

Seems state and local aid has been taken off the table with the upcoming federal stimulus package.

I think that’s good. It’s a shame we’re even thinking about letting these places get away with years of disastrous spending.

I wish we’d scrap the whole idea of a stimulus and just let the chips fall where they may. If people are out of money and losing their home, then the answer is simple - open the economy and let them go back to work.

But we won’t do that because we’re radically changing society to better suit the ultra-rich.

Oh, was I supposed to say a virus is to blame? Sorry!

Here in Missoula it’s terrible for common workers, and the managerial class alike.

What are all the former restaurant and bar and small store managers supposed to do now or in six months when their steady and often-salaried positions are gone for good?

Many will find whatever they can to keep them in the lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to.

I know this from my visit to Ace Hardware today.

I was looking for a kitchen sink faucet piece because mine was leaking. Found it, headed to the checkouts, where three lanes were open. All of them were staffed by people older than my parents, so at least 70 if not older.

Aren’t these the people that are supposed to be deathly afraid of covid? Well, not if you have no savings and can’t pay the rent/mortgage if you don’t get that next paycheck. They have no savings.

The lane I selected had a very old man with very white hair being helped by a younger woman in her 30s. I guess he was in training, or perhaps just having trouble. He did seem flustered with the credit card he was trying to enter for the customer ahead of me.

Next to him was a woman working. She had short, gray spiky hair and an older gentleman with white hair was training her. I suppose she was in her 60s and he was in his 70s, maybe even 80s. He had a hearing-aid in one ear.

When they got done with their customer they had a moment to chit-chat. I overheard him ask her how long she’d been living here. She replied a month. I couldn’t hear the next part, but I think she said she was living in Stevensville. He seemed surprised by this. He then asked where she’d worked before. She replied that she’d been the manager of the Dairy Queen in the mall, which recently closed because the owners wanted to retire.

Many owners are retiring now. I wonder why.

Anyways, I suppose all three of those old people could be working at Ace Hardware on a Friday morning because they want to, because they get bored sitting at home.

But I think they need the money, and without that job, they’d soon be living in one of the three official homeless centers around town, or one of the unofficial camps.

Yeah, times are tough...and some $600 check and a few more weeks of unemployment are just holding off the inevitable collapse of the entire system. But a few more weeks or months is a lot of time for the ultra-rich to squeeze a few more of your pension dollars out of the stock market.

Let’s not talk about all the people relying on pensions that are soon going to be out in the cold. The trend now is for kids to move back in with their parents; in the coming years parents will be forced to move in with kids as their pensions disappear.

It’s frightening. Let’s ignore it and pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Maybe that’ll make it just go away.

Back in March the feds gave every American $1,200, but now they’re only going to dole-out $600.

Do they really think people are going to spend that in the wider economy? I think most will use it to get food, gas, and maybe an extra month of rent. Struggling small businesses counting on the holiday season to pull them through for the year won't get a penny of that $600.

And then it’ll be gone, and the American people will have their hand out once more.

How long do you think that $600 is going to last people that have nothing? And why do they have nothing? Why, for years and years, did these people live hand to mouth, never saving a penny?

They’re just as bad as these local governments, whom I guess they took their marching orders from.

And if we do bail-out these stupid Americans and these even stupider governments, how long before they come back for more? Because it’s obvious they couldn't properly take care of themselves in the first place. Do you think they’ll suddenly learn how if you keep handing them everything?

I don’t.

I think we should have ripped the Band-Aid off months ago.

We’ll have to eventually, and the longer we put it off, the more painful it’s gonna be.

And I think that’s the idea. For the ultra-rich, the longer we wait the worse the inevitable situation will become...but for whom?

Not them. No one’s going to take a pitchfork to their gated-community. Instead we’ll blame each other, using our cancel culture and racial animosities and political hatred to tear this country apart (we've been doing so most of the past four years already).

The rich will watch from their castles in the clouds, laughing as they take what miniscule assets we have left.

The End Draws Near

10/28/2020

Are we in the End Times?

I’m sure the thought’s crossed your mind over the past few months. It’s crossed the mind of many Americans; indeed...many around the world.

The weather doesn’t help.

Today we have raging wildfires on the west coast; a massive body of water and wind approaching the east.

This week we saw the worst October weather we’ve ever seen hit the upper-midwest…just a few days after Colorado saw their worst wildfires.

Yeah, seems like End Times indeed.

If that kind of outlook appeals to you, then I highly suggest you check out this book called Lost Prophecies of the Future of America.

I bought a copy last month and finished it pretty quickly. It’s a very tough read, with chapters on economic collapse, famine, civil unrest, martial law, New Madrid earthquake, west coast earthquake, east coast tsunami, World War III, and Christian persecution.

It’s a tough read...and one that’s certainly not for everyone.

Voting for Biden?

This book probably isn’t for you.

And speaking of Biden...how ‘bout them Philadelphia protests?

Hm...Philly....that’s in the state of Pennsylvania, isn’t it?

A real important state, too, I hear.

How do we know?

Because Biden has visited Pennsylvania ten times over the past two months, while Trump visited five times alone in September and he’s done so a couple more times in October, including yesterday.

So we know this state is important...it’s just that the protesters/rioters do not.

I mean...don’t they know that their ‘efforts’ are hurting Biden and helping Trump? After all, most of us figure that’s exactly why the protests/riots stopped for the latter half of the summer and into fall, before starting up again this past week.

Playing right into Trump’s hands, those protesters are.

But then, they don’t really care who wins.

While a Trump win would be ideal as it allows them to continue to riot and loot with a viable reason (?), a Biden win certainly isn’t going to stop the rioting.

These are the disenfranchised, the downtrodden and the forgotten. No matter who’s in Washington, these people’s lives aren’t going to change.

The proletariat.

The big fear is that these proles are going to upset the apple cart something fierce starting next week.

There’s already signs that there’ll be widespread voter intimidation in several areas of the country. Examples include threats to burn down homes in New Hampshire, Trump vehicles rallies yelling at polling places, and a trailer park landlord telling tenants that rent will double if Biden is elected.

And it’s not even election day yet.

There’s already a group called ShutDown D.C. that’s going to flood into the nation’s capital on election night to ensure that Trump leaves...even though he doesn’t have to leave until January 20, and then only if he loses (78 days).

Notice that all this chaos is happening in the cities. The ‘heartland’ of America doesn’t have much to worry about. They have the food, they have the guns.

The cities?

Boy...what’s gonna happen when we have weeks-on-end of protests and riots, so much so that businesses grind to a halt (if they’re even still open with the second wave of lockdowns).

How are the trucks going to deliver to the supermarkets?

Here’s an image of a store shelf in Philadelphia last night:

We’ve seen large transport trucks stopped by mass protests on the interstate before. How long before the truckers decide to just stop delivering to those out-of-control, on-fire cities?

At that point the ‘peaceful protesters’ won’t be breaking into the fancy brand name stores to steal bags and coats; they’ll be breaking into whatever stores still have food on the shelves. After a week or two of no trucks, there won’t be many.

That’s when the food riots will start, with the strong subjugating the weak. Rape and murder and torture will be the order of the day. Mobs will form, with merciless leaders, and those mobs will begin moving toward the heartland, and their stores of food.

Of course, I could be wrong...and I hope I am.

I hope some semblance of law and order returns to those cities after they erupt next week.

The only certainty is that we don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s still time to prepare.

Clear Skies Ahead?

9/30/2020

The smoke is gone...for now.

It left last week. I started taking my baby out for longer walks again.

But then earlier this week we saw images coming to us from California’s wine country. Seems the fires are back.

I suspect the smoke will be back in Montana soon as well.

There’s this debate as to the cause of the fires, which are terribly bad this year in California - 8,100 fires in total that have burned 3.7 million acres...and fire season lasts another 6 weeks there.

Some say bad forest management’s to blame; others say climate change.

Chances are good it’s a combination of the two.

But I’ll take it a bit further and say that this combination is nothing more than God working behind the scenes.

Oh, God...here we go!

Yep...time for that big ‘eye roll.’

Might want to close this tab on your browser out.

Because let’s be honest...this is not what you wanted to hear today.

As fires burn our states and idiots burn our cities, I just can’t help but thinking End Times kinds of things. How about the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, that were wiped-out by God around the year 1900 BC.

There’s still a lot of debate about why these places were destroyed, but many agree it was a combination of “unnatural lust” and “abominable things.”

We’re seeing a lot of that in America today, have been for years.

The unbridled greed...the insatiable lust...the pure gluttony.

And it’s even worse in America today, especially those cities with the most ‘peaceful protests.’

The wrath in Chicago is worse than it’s ever been, with 50 people typically shot and killed each weekend, most of them young and gang-affiliated...with a few kids in the crossfire thrown in for good measure.

Black lives matter, don’t they?

To more and more people, it appears that it’s just too late for this country. That’s why you can’t find a gun to buy, either new or used. It’s why we have so many Californians moving here.

At some point the Fed can’t keep Band-Aiding the economy together. At some point the bill will come due.

How is it all going to start?

I mean...we know it’s starting now - look at the plague of fear that we’re experiencing...the massive fires...the huge swarms of locusts...the massive floods.

The latter two worry me a lot. The locust swarms have moved from Africa to India and now they’re going toward China. They arrived in that country’s Yunnan Province in June and quickly at 23,000 acres. China already lost most of its pork supply and there’s a good chance their Three Gorges Dam could fail soon. They’re in trouble.

But those are largely regional concerns. What about the global problems on the horizon?

My biggest worry is Deutsche Bank, which laid-off 18,000 workers in July as part of a “vast restructuring plan” that aims to get rid of its global equities trading business.

The next Lehman Brothers?

Deutsche Bank is the largest bank in Germany; the second largest in Europe and it lost $5.8 billion last year while at the same time racking-up 7,000 lawsuits from disgruntled customers and investors.

I worry about this bank across the pond because if it goes, I’m worried the whole system will go...starting with some other shaky banks, and then going to the airlines.

The airlines desperately need a bailout, but that bailout will never come. Why? Because the banks will need the bailout more, and there won’t be any scraps left over for the airlines, let alone places like Disneyland and the thousands they just laid-off.

I suspect air travel around the world will effectively cease for all but the upper 10% of the population, if even them.

That’s when the American dollar will fall precipitously in value. Prices for the basics will shoot through the roof overnight. I suspect most families will be spending 40% of their household budget on food.

We’ll see bank runs before the banks close for good and the ATMs go dark. Then the mobs will take to the street, heading to the rich neighborhoods to take TVs and cars and sporting goods and other fancy stuff.

After a week they’ll ignore all that and just go for the food.

At that point anything could happen, but I suspect most police officers will walk off the job. Few will work anymore in most of the professions. It’ll be clear that pensions are worthless, so why work? I don’t know what’ll happen to the old people that rely on Social Security. For everyone else it’ll be safer to stay at home, conserving your energy so you don’t have to eat so much each day.

This is when the worst of the Godlessness will happen, and it’s gonna get ugly.

How ‘Bout that Economy?!?

10/15/2018

Last week we saw the Dow and the S&P 500 fall by 4% each. The Nasdaq lost 3.7%.

10% is correction territory and 20% signals a bear market. Stocks continue to fall this morning.

USA Today gave a couple reasons for the drops:

The 10-year Treasury note reaching a seven-year high of 3.25%

This is the result of all the good economic news we’ve had lately

The problem is…all this ‘good’ economic news isn’t really that good.

Last month it was reported that unemployment reached a 50-year low, falling to 3.7%.

Sadly, this number is wildly off.

Another aspect that economists point to is the 4.2% economic growth the US saw during the second quarter of this year.

This number is too high.

I’d like to run through these things, and offer a few reasons why the economy is a lot worse than it’s made out to be.

On History Repeating Itself

Our economy has become a house of cards, and anyone with a brain should see it.

Sadly, those in charge either don’t see it or don’t want to.

A few weeks ago, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell said that “our economy is strong. Growth is running at a healthy clip. Unemployment is low, the number of people working is rising steadily, and wages are up. Inflation is low and stable.”

It was the same story in 2008.

In February of that year, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said the “economy is fundamentally strong, diverse and resilient.”

The next month Bear Stearns collapsed, even though a year before its stock price had been $172 a share, and a month earlier it’d been at $93.

JPMorgan Chase ended up buying the company for $10 a share, or $1.2 billion. Weeks before, Bear Stearns had been worth $18 billion.

The big problem 10 years ago was the record levels of debt that the Fed was encouraging people to take on.

Today the economy is also driven by debt.

On Debt-Driven Stock Buybacks

One of the biggest fallacies of our stock market economy is that actual earnings and real work are driving the growth.

The reality is that stock buybacks are driving the markets.

Back in June the AP put it like this: “Flush with savings from lower tax bills and profits from a growing economy, big U.S. companies are spending a record amount buying back their own stock.”

But this is misleading: with interest rates so low, companies like Apple borrowed money to issue bonds so they could then buy back their own stocks, even though the company had over $200 billion in cash stashed offshore.

For the first quarter alone, $189 billion was spent buying back stocks on the S&P 500. The previous record had been set in June 2007.

Apple alone has bought $23 billion worth of its own stock this year, mainly so it can reduce the number of shares, which means those with shares see a higher level of dividends.

It wasn’t sales and innovation that allowed Apple to reach $1 trillion in market cap. It was their constant stock buybacks.

Shareholders want this, as they want the highest price-to-earning ratio as they can get, as this means higher earnings for them.

Currently P/E ratios are out of control, with the stock market capitalization to national GDP ratio at 33.

This means that the stock market share prices are trading 33 times higher than what the company’s market values really are.

Back before the Great Depression started, the number was 32.

Goldman Sachs figures that $1.3 trillion will be spent by corporations on stock buybacks and dividend payouts this year alone.

Stock buybacks were made illegal in 1934 because people realized how much they’d contributed to the Great Depression.

Having forgotten that, Congress made the practice legal again in 1982.

On Inflation

Just 12% of Americans feel concerned about the economy today. Back in 2008 we know that 86% of people were concerned.

Inflation should be a real concern, as the only reason household wealth has gone up by $30 trillion since 2009 is that we have inflated asset prices.

Based on Trump’s UN comments that GDP is 4.2%, we should have an inflation rate of 1.2%.

Does anyone really believe this?

After all, insurance prices and fuel and rents have all gone up by more than 1.2% this year.

Three main fallacies are leading to this artificially-low number:

The government assumes people are buying more goods online than they actually are, and that those goods are cheaper

The government assumes the quality of goods sold is better today than in the past

The government assumes that people with mortgages are paying rent to themselves, or what’s called imputed rents.

Lots of assumptions there, which means that our inflation number is nothing more than a guess.

The Consumer Price Index is more accurate, and if we went by that our inflation rate would be 2.7%, which in turn would lower our GDP to 2.7%.

If we went by the Fed’s PCE inflation index, then inflation would be 2.2% and GDP would be 3.2%.

On Unemployment

We hear a lot that unemployment is at 3.7% today, but I don’t believe that.

That number is called the U-3 unemployment rate, which has been around since 1994, the year that long-term discouraged workers were kicked off the lists.

The U-6 unemployment rate includes short-term discouraged workers, and last month that was at 7.5%.

Some economists figure the true unemployment number is 15% to 18%, and some figure it might be as high as 21.3%.

None of this has diminished consumer confidence, which reached an 18-year high recently.

The last two times that consumer confidence was so high was in 2000 and again in 2008.

One of the big problems is that 50 million people in this country work part-time, are temp workers, work on-call, or are under-employed or don’t even have a job.

Trump claims that wages are going up 2.9% a year, but that number’s only accurate for full-time, permanent workers. That means upwards of 100 million people aren’t getting any wage increases, or at least increases well below 2.9%.

And when we compare the CPI inflation of 2.7% and the nominal wage increase of 2.9%, we realize that real wages are only going up by 0.2% a year, which means real wages are stagnant.

To make it even worse, if we do have higher inflation than we think, real wages might actually be going down. If inflation is at 3.5% for some families, their real wages will be falling by 0.6% a year.

Real wages have fallen in value for 100 million Americans every year since 2009.

Notes

“Alternate Unemployment Charts.” Shadow Government Statistics. Retrieved 15 October 2018. http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts

“Bear Stearns.” Wikipedia. Retrieved 15 October 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Stearns

Choe, Stan. “Stock buybacks reach record high.” AP. 26 June 2018. http://www.journalgazette.net/business/20180626/stock-buybacks-reach-record-high

Coppes, Chuck. “2008 Crisis Redux, Culture Wars & End of American Exceptionalism.” Chuck Coppes. 14 October 2018. http://chuckcoppes.com/current-newsletter/4592066389

Imbert, Fred. “Nasdaq drops 1% as Apple and Netflix lead tech shares lower.” CNBC. 15 October 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/15/us-futures-point-to-a-triple-digit-fall-amid-saudi-arabia-tensions.html

Powell, Jerome H. “Brief Remarks on the U.S. Economy.” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. 27 September 2018. https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20180927a.htm

Rasmus, Jack. “Trump at the UN: Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics.” Global Research. 28 September 2018. https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-at-the-un-lies-damn-lies-statistics/5655456

“Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. 5 October 2018. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

Shell, Adam. “Why did the stock market drop? Here are all the reasons for the Dow plunge.” USA Today. 10 October 2018. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/10/10/why-stock-market-went-down-so-much/1593803002/

Trade Disputes, Currency Wars, Oil Markets and the Global Media

8/1/2018

“You should never again talk about economics, you are an absolute moron and have no idea what you are saying.”

That’s what a commenter said the last time I put up a big post on economics, way back in April.

After that the anonymous person told me to “stop licking Trump’s balls,” mentioned that I was “more than happy to lick Essman’s dick,” and ended by calling me “the biggest tool in the box.”

I guess it must have been something I said.

While some resort to name-calling to make their point and win friends, I always felt citing facts was more effective.

So why don’t we do it again today?

If you like hard numbers, you’ll like this post.

If you feel that our media isn’t quite telling us the whole story, you’ll like this post.

If you feel the American economy isn’t quite as strong as it’s made out to be, you’ll like this post.

If you’re a partisan or a politician or someone that likes living in their little bubble, you won’t like this post.

As usual with the Montana blogs, though…you’ll get more information here than anywhere else. This article contains 19 different sources.

Let’s begin with the media, then get into stock buybacks, followed by China and the petrodollar before we end with a brief conclusion.

The State of Our Media

Let’s begin with the sad state of our media.

The US media never really mentions things like currency and oil much anymore, and for good reason – they don’t want you to know.

Remember, 90% of the American media is owned by just 6 companies: GE, NewsCorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.

Back in 1983, 90% of the American media was owned by 50 companies.

Despite Americans now watching 166 minutes of TV a day – compared with the 10 minutes a day they spend reading – they don’t know anything about what’s really going on in the world.

And that’s one of the main goals of the American media.

How’s that working for ‘em?

Not too good.

The three major cable news channels – CNN, Fox, and MSNBC – saw their audiences decline by 12% last year, or 1.2 million people.

Despite that loss in audience, those three networks saw a 10% increase in revenues, bringing them to $5 billion in total 2017 revenues.

Most of that money is coming from advertisers. Here are the largest advertisers on those networks:

Nutrisystem: $1.9 million
Otezla: $1.07 million
T-Mobile: $938,000
GEICO: $917,000
Jenny Craig: $806,000
Progressive: $712,000
Humira: $690,000
Sleep Number: $655,000

We know that in 2017, around 2,900 worked in the cable TV news industry.

What about the network news?

ABC, CBS and NBC saw their nightly news audience drop by 7% last year, to 5.2 million people.

The networks’ morning news audience fell 10% in 2017, to around 3 million people.

Additionally, the networks’ Sunday news shows fell 1%, to 2 million people while their news magazine shows (think 60 Minutes) fell 12%.

The ad revenues for the three networks’ nightly news shows was $552 million last year, about the same as they were the year before.

The morning news shows brought in a staggering $1.1 billion in revenue last year, however.

And how’s our local TV news doing?

For the morning, local TV news have seen a 15% decrease in viewership while for the evening and late-night they’ve seen a 7% drop. Midday saw the smallest drop, with 4%.

Across America last year, local TV news brought in $17.4 billion in advertising revenue. Sounds like a lot, but it’s a 13% drop from 2016…an election year.

The local TV stations’ digital ad revenue was at $1 billion, or a 3% increase from the previous year.

We know that about 29,000 people work in local TV news.

Finally, the newspapers.

Last year there was a daily newspaper circulation in America of 31 million, with 34 million on Sunday. That’s an 11% and 10% drop from 2016, respectively.

When it comes to reading the newspaper online, the 50 largest daily newspapers reported an average of 11.5 million unique visitors a month…or about the same number as the year before.

Most people spend 2.5 minutes reading their local newspaper online.

In addition, alt-weekly papers have seen a 10% decline from the previous year, with an average circulation of 55,000.

We know that just over 39,000 people work in the newspaper business, which is 15% lower than it was in 2014, and 45% lower than it was in 2004.

The American newspaper industry made $16.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2017, a 10% drop from the year before. Circulation revenue brought in an additional $11 billion, which is actually up 3% from the previous year.

The Stock Buy Back Scheme

Let's get into something the corporate media won't: our house-of-cards stock market.

Currently we have a proposal by the Trump Administration to bypass Congress so that the rich 1% can pay less in capital gains taxes.

George H.W. Bush had the same idea in the 90s, but figured he couldn’t use the Treasury to bypass Congress so let the issue go.

Now it’s back, and it sounds like it’ll reduce federal revenues by $10 billion a year.

This is great for the 1%, as they can now save a lot of money on the sale of their stock.

It’s interesting when we get into the issue of stock sales and stock buybacks these days.

For instance, did you know that after the 1929 Crash, stock buybacks were made illegal?

Yep, happened in 1934 and lasted until 1982 when the SEC allowed them again.

Much of our nation's dilemmas can be traced back to the 1980s, when we switched from an industrial capitalist model to the financialization of the American economy.

This was done with the export of US manufacturing to China at the same time we shifted the nation’s focus and talent to financial markets and institutions and the elites who run them.

We stopped making things so we could move numbers around on a spreadsheet…and we called this progress.

So what does this stock buy back thing mean, exactly?

Well, how it works is that a corporation’s CEO has their pay tied to stock share performance…so if the stock price goes up, so does their pay/bonus.

So what these CEOs do is direct their corporation to purchase their own stock, or what’s called a buyback.

This causes the share price to go up, simply because there are fewer available shares to buy. Supply and demand.

Sometimes the corporations even use debt to buyback their stock. Whether it’s profits or debt, though, either way those corporations aren’t really making anything!

No research & development…no plant expansions…no jobs created.

But boy…that CEO and his management team got their high pay and bonuses, didn’t they?

Sadly for most Americans, they get pulled into this pump-and-dump operation. Seeing the stock price go up – and figuring the company must be doing something right – they buy that stock.

There’s really no value behind that stock, however…just manipulation.

Trump’s latest idea to cut stock sale taxes for the rich will only make the problem worse.

The Trade War with China

In addition to those shady financial dealings, we know we’re in the midst of a trade war and have been for months.

The main enemy here is China…or at least that’s what the media wants you to think. We never hear much about the other twenty-or-so countries that have been hit by Trump tariffs, just China.

And this makes sense, because like I said…China needs to be the enemy.

The country actually had the audacity to start its own crude oil futures market, the Shanghai International Energy Exchange.

China is already importing more oil than any other nation.

This is a direct challenge to the global currency, the US petrodollar. Now it’s not just the dollar that’s backed-up by oil, but the Chinese yuan.

How’d it come to this?

Mostly because Muslims were pissed at Israelis, which sparked the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

This caused OPEC to raise crude oil prices by 400%.

Knowing this could spell doom for America, the financial elites met at the 1973 Bilderberg meeting and made a deal with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority to put all the Saudi oil profits back into the US stock and bond markets, with the express promise that the US military would come to the aid of the Saudi Royal family should they ever face trouble.

One of the most recent examples of the kind of trouble the Saudis needed the US government for was when Saddam Hussein began to sell his oil for euros, and wasn’t recycling them back into the US markets…as everyone in the world was doing.

This brought about the 2003 Iraq War, and since then we’ve seen Iraq continue to exchange its oil in the petrodollar exchange system.

The key here is the currency and what’s backing it up.

Now, China has wanted to start a crude oil futures market since 1993…and they did so before volatility closed it down in 1994.

They got serious about it again in 2001, but it took them seventeen long years before they were able to get the next iteration of the exchange open.

Now it’s doing an incredible amount of business. In just the first hour of operation, the exchange traded 23,000 oil contracts worth $10 billion.

What’s so wonderful for investors is that they can turn around and convert that petro-yuan into gold at the Shanghai Gold Exchange, something that’s all the easier since China bought the London Metals Exchange in 2012.

This allowed China to issue yuan-backed gold futures. Together with the oil-backing it up, the Chinese yuan has become quite the strong currency.

With no gold backing it up, the US dollar is in a much weaker position. The only thing backing up the US currency is the US military...and we know they can't win wars anymore (mostly because it's not as profitable as continual fighting).

The London Metals Exchange accounted for 80% of the world’s base-metal options, and in the $1.4 billion pound deal, we know financial elites like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan made out like bandits.

And China backs up its currency with gold. The country currently takes in 42% of all the metals traded in the world.

Since 2009, when the country allowed citizens in other nations to buy its currency, the yuan has become much more popular.

But…but…but…what about this massive level of economic growth in the US right now?

Um…what growth?

Have you seen a hike in wages at all? I haven’t.

Sure, GDP growth might have gone to 4.1% in the second quarter, and the S&P is up 14% since last year…but how is that helping 99% of the American population?

Don’t be fooled by the 4.1% unemployment number, either. We both know that record-levels of senior citizens are rejoining the workforce because they just don’t have enough money.

We know that 225,000 Americans aged 85 or older are currently working, which is 4.4% of the workforce…up from the 2.6% it was in 2006. Those in their 30s are hardly working at all.

Some also point to the Shanghai Composite index being down nearly 13% this year, or the fact that Chinese GDP has slowed to 6.7% in the second quarter, or even that the yuan has fallen 8% in value in the past few months.

The thing is…China can weather those fluctuations. Currency drops will actually stem-off inflation for the country, which will help them in the trade war. Their imports might become more expensive, but their exports will become more competitive.

Could America weather the same?

I don’t think so.

Conclusion

There is no sun on the horizon for America.

We were $20 trillion in debt when Trump took office, and budget deficits were already 16% higher than they had been the year before.

Now for 2019, the projection for the annual budget deficit has already soared from $530 billion to $1.1 trillion.

With America, the country is doing everything backwards:

No interest in gold whatsoever
Using crude oil to force the world to use our currency
Whoring our military out to the Saudis
Record levels of debt each year

With China, we have a country that’s doing everything right:

Saving up a ton of gold
Using a crude oil exchange to get away from the dollar
Keeping debt low

Both countries stifle the free flow of information with firm controls on the media.

In China the government cracks down on what can be said and who can say it.

In America, 6 corporations control our information and they’re driven by the profit-motive more than any civic sense of duty to you or this country.

But unlike China, America’s stock market is nothing more than a sham, with many major companies focusing on driving up the price of their shares.

They’re not so interested in making products or building this country or helping you or your family.

Another financial crash is a certainty, as financial markets move in cycles.

While it could be this year, I think the house of cards might stay upright for a while longer.

Either way, the crash will come in autumn…as they always do.

Notes

“American Time Use Survey Summary.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. 28 June 2018. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm

Ariens, Chris. “Here Are the Biggest Advertisers on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.” TVNewser. 9 March 2018. https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-the-biggest-advertisers-on-fox-news-cnn-and-msnbc/359057

“Cable News Fact Sheet.” Pew Research Center. 25 July 2018. http://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/cable-news/

“Chinese buy London Metal Exchange in £1.4bn takeover.” Independent. 16 June 2012. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/chinese-buy-london-metal-exchange-in-14bn-takeover-7855200.html

Coppes, Chuck. “Economic Deceptions, Petrodollar Dynamics & Metals Charts.” Chuck Coppes. 29 July 2018. http://chuckcoppes.com/current-newsletter/4592066389

Daye, Chu. “China becomes world’s largest oil importer.” Global Times. 6 February 2018. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1088490.shtml

Islam, Faisal. “Iraq nets handsome profit by dumping dollar for euro.” The Guardian. 15 February 2003. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro

Jiang, Yuxuan. “Will China’s renminbi oil futures end the petrodollar monopoly?” South China Morning Post. 1 April 2018. https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/2139676/will-chinas-renminbi-oil-futures-end-petrodollar-monopoly

“Local TV News Fact Sheet.” Pew Research Center. 12 July 2018. http://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/local-tv-news/

Lutz, Ashley. “These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America.” Business Insider. 14 June 2012. https://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6

Marshall, Andrew Gavin. “Controlling the Global Economy: Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and the Federal Reserve.” Global Research. 3 August 2009. https://www.globalresearch.ca/controlling-the-global-economy-bilderberg-the-trilateral-commission-and-the-federal-reserve/14614

“Newspapers Fact Sheet.” Pew Research Center. 13 June 2018. http://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/

“Network News Fact Sheet.” Pew Research Center. 25 July 2018. http://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/network-news/

Park, Sungwoo. “How China Is About to Shake Up the Oil Futures Market.” Bloomberg. 9 February 2018. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-09/how-china-will-shake-up-the-oil-futures-market-quicktake-q-a

“Petrodollar.” Wikispooks. 6 February 2018. https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Petrodollar

Taylor, Andrew. “The US government’s budget deficit is about to explode – and the Trump tax law and spending surge is to blame.” Business Insider. 9 April 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-budget-deficit-1-trillion-2019-cbo-report-2018-4

Van Dam, Andrew. “Record number of folks age 85 and older are working.” The Durango Herald. 6 July 2018. https://durangoherald.com/articles/230620

Wallace, Charles. “Trade War Hurts China While U.S. Economy Booms.” Forbes. 31 July 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleswallace1/2018/07/31/trade-war-hurts-china-while-u-s-economy-booms/#14dbb0ba5b64

Yiu, Enoch. “London Metal Exchange to launch yuan-denominated futures in sign of Chinese currency’s growing cachet.” South China Morning Post. 21 May 2018. https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/2146956/london-metal-exchange-launch-yuan-denominated-futures-sign

4 Reasons Another Market Crash is Coming

4/24/2018

Let’s talk about some economic chaos again.

Most Americans avoid these topics like the plague.

I don’t blame ‘em – it’s dry reading, not that easy to understand, and doesn’t really seem like it impacts your life.

But it does. Worse, it’ll impact your grandkids’ lives, and big time.

I’m getting a lot of these ideas from both Chuck Coppes and Craig R. Smith.

#1 The Spending Bill

On March 23, Trump signed the most recent spending bill.

It’s a $1.3 trillion spending bill, which is $300 billion more than the last bill was.

Even before the spending bill passed, we knew that the government would have a $985 billion deficit for fiscal year 2019.

The federal government has $3.4 trillion in revenue, yet is spending $4.4 trillion.

And all of this came about with a GOP House, a GOP Senate, and a GOP White House.

So much for the Party of fiscal conservatism.

And just wait until the Democrats get ahold of the levers of power again. Can you imagine how much higher the deficit would be if Schumer and Pelosi were calling the shots?

The spending bill is a clear sign that another crash is coming, simply because the government has signaled to the markets that it’s not concerned about reining in spending.

That means more debt, which means printing more money (this is called quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve). And an increase in the money supply will produce inflation.

Please realize that our government’s goal isn’t to fight inflation, but to encourage it. It’s the only way the Fed can buy up that debt (something they don’t want to do, but they’re the buyer of last resort).

In situations like this, we know that the Fed will never raise interest rates to 5% as it wants to. That’d create $1 trillion worth of interest payments on our debt.

That’s not even the worst of it. The spending bill only funds the government until September 30. That means in 5 months we’ll see another deficit-busting bill come to Trump’s desk.

Will he sign it this time, or do what needs to happen, which is shutting down the government?

Unless this country gets its spending under control, the children and grandchildren of the people living today aren’t going to have much in the way of a quality life.

#2 The Asian Gold/Oil Bank

It’s called a crude oil futures contract and it’ll operate on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE).

This new trading option for oil in Asia launched on March 26, three days after the U.S. passed its spending bill.

Coincidence? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Asia is the biggest consumer of oil in the world, and this new futures contract will better tie oil prices to the Chinese Yuan, which is backed up by the country’s massive gold stockpiles.

This is a huge blow to the American economic system, which has pegged oil to the U.S. dollar for decades now. We call it the petro-dollar.

For years and years, America would finance its debt with U.S. Treasury bonds, which were pegged to oil. The world really had no choice but to buy these bonds so it could keep getting its oil.

Bonds are nothing more than creating money out of debt.

Now the world has another option, one given to it by China. This is the petro-yuan.

The world wants other currency options – just look at the rise of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies over the past year.

What effect this will have on the bond market in the U.S. is unclear, but I have no doubt it’ll be disastrous, with years and years of bear markets.

With no one willing to finance America’s debt, the country’s deficits will continue to increase, its spending power will go down as it pays more to finance that debt, and American consumers will see prices for nearly everything go up while at the same time their level of government-provided services (including pensions) will go down.

#3 Housing is Out of Control…Again

In 2007, the average cost for a home in Los Angeles was $530,000.

The next year that fell to $427,000 and in 2009 it was $394,000.

By 2011, the average price was down to $366,000, meaning the California housing market had seen prices fall 50% from their March 2007 peak.

By 2016, however, prices had rebounded to $569,000, though average prices across the state were still over 9% below 2007-levels.

Now, in 2018, the average price for a home in LA is $624,000…or nearly $100,000 over the prices we saw in 2007.

Remember, the out of control housing market was a big reason for the Great Recession.

Now prices are even more out of control, and that’s true all across the country. Here in Missoula prices are $270,000 on average, and that with the average household making $45,000 a year.

What’s even more alarming is that people are beginning to take out a lot more home equity loans. They do this so they have more money to buy more stuff. Sometimes this happens because wages are stagnant though prices across the economic board are on the rise.

These are the house-poor.

Housing prices are at record levels, and the best stocks on the market are homebuilder stocks.

Taken altogether, these are classic signs of a bubble.

#4 The Dow Isn’t a Good Benchmark

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has 30 stocks. It first came about in 1885, having just 12 stocks at that time.

Many of these stocks are big names – American Express, Apple, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Disney, GE, IBM, McDonald’s, and more.

This time last year, the Dow was approaching 21,000 points. Today it’s over 24,000.

But is this a good benchmark for our economy?

After all, those 30 stocks are stagnant or down.

Coca-Cola is at $43…exactly where it was last year.

GE was $29 last year, today it’s $14.

IBM was $160 last year, today it’s $147.

Disney was at $115 last year, today it’s $100.

Yeah…not all stocks on the index are stagnant or down, but a lot of them are. Despite that, the Dow continues to rise and rise with no end in sight.

Students of history know the ends always come, however. Don’t feel too bad – these always create new beginnings.

Currently the world has $233 trillion in debt, which is three times more than the annual global GDP.

Sustainable? I don’t think so.

The good news is that you can prepare now. Getting your spending under control is a great place to start, as is reducing your debt (student loan and credit card debt are silent killers of Americans and their wellbeing).

And never forget that great opportunities exist in the most miserable of situations.

Back in ’29 there was a lot about bread lines, but those that saw the writing on the wall early bought-up low and stood in the buffet lines.

Where will you be standing when it all comes crashing down?

Conclusion

Short-term and long-term.

It’s hard to say what’ll happen in either, but there are plenty of clues to give us an idea.

Short-term, things will be about the same. I’m sure we have several more quarters of up and up and up.

But in a couple years, the shit’ll hit the fan.

Always does. Happened in ’07, ’20, ’29, ’73, ’79, ’87, ’00, and in ’08.

A hundred years ago we called ‘em ‘panics,’ and the bankers that typically brought them about would either pony up the money to fix the problem or go under.

Today the government has taken the place of the bankers, using taxpayer money to bail-out the banks when the inevitable panics occur. Let’s hope they don’t use bail-ins, which is where the banks take the money you have in your bank account to correct their own balance sheets.

This is perfectly legal, as your deposits are no longer your assets, but the bank’s assets. This came about via the Dodd-Frank bill.

It won’t be pretty when that happens, though many won’t see much impact.

If you’re Jeff Bezos and have $100 billion, what’s it matter if half is wiped out and you only have $50 billion?

On the other hand, if you’re living in poverty and reliant on the government for handouts, your life won’t change much either.

It’s the middle class that’ll be hit, as is always the case. The most honest, hardworking, and patriotic members of society always get it the worst.

And for some reason they put up with this, time and time again. I guess they’re just too busy to care…if they even notice.

Ignorance is short-term, but stupid is forever.

This isn’t the country our Founders envisioned. Here’s how John Adams put it in a 1789 letter to Thomas Jefferson:

“All the perplexities, confusion and distresses in America arise not from defects in the Constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”

Montana Wages and Worries

12/11/2017

$39,034.

That’s the average annual wage for all occupations in Montana…or at least was a few years ago.

The national average is $46,440.

$39,000 divided by 12 comes out to $3,250 a month.

That’s $812 a week. $116 a day.

Pretty good. Helluva lot better than what many people I know are making.

Take the minimum wage. $8.15 an hour. That comes to $65.20 for an 8-hour shift.

$326 a week. $1,304 a month. $15,648 a year.

If you were making minimum wage and working full-time, you’d be making $23,000 less than the average annual wage in Montana.

Conservatives often pipe-up and say, ‘Well, minimum wage jobs are entry-point jobs and aren’t meant to be permanent.” Sometimes they’ll claim that only teenagers have these kinds of jobs.

Both of these points are wrong.

First of all, how would fast food businesses stay open during the day if they only employed teenagers…who should be in school during those times?

And second…from Friday to Sunday, I worked with over two dozen people that were making minimum wage, the same as me. I think the youngest of those two dozen was probably 25-years-old.

Neither I nor anyone else clocked-in a solid 8-hours, either.

There was no $65.20 that day. No $326 for the week, no $1,304 for the month and certainly no $15,648 for the year.

Not a lot of money in the pocket, and many, many Montanans can say the same.

This is the issue that binds us.

While we have much that can separate us – religion, race, sexual orientation – the one thing we all have in common is the need for money.

We gotta eat. We need shelter. And then there’s the ‘wants’ list.

To get what we want, we have to work. Building up skills through schooling and self-teaching is a great way to move up in the workforce, and boost your pay.

Moving to more lucrative locations is also an option, one many young Montanans employ.

But for those that stay here, even increased skills and school certificates don’t always ensure you’ll be paid more.

Lots of Missoula minimum wage workers have a college degree. I’m one of ‘em.

So it’s tough, and it shows no sign of changing.

From 1973 to 2015, American worker productivity grew by 72%. Wages, on the other hand, went up just 9% during that time. That comes out to a 0.2% pay increase each year, and when productivity was increasing 1.3% a year.

By 2014 more than 47 million Americans were living in poverty, or nearly 15% of the country.

In Montana, the poverty rate is 16.5%.

I don’t know why businesses don’t pay more. I think a big part is that workers are a dime-a-dozen. Businesses don’t value their employees. Pay reflects that.

And good luck asking for a raise. I did that with one job in January and was promptly let go.

A lot of people don’t even bother asking for a raise. They know the answer would be ‘no.’

So it’s frustrating and it causes worries and makes people fight. 35% of married couples say money issues cause stress in their relationship.

That’s really the only way you can get by on the minimum wage…if you’re married or together.

Then the $8.15 an hour effectively becomes $16.30 an hour. $652 a week. $2,608 a month. $31,296 a year.

Still $7,700 less than the national average.

Maybe this article has bored you. Alas, we’re not going to see substantive political change in this country until more people start talking about this issue.

Incoming Thoughts

9/17/2017

I worked for 10 hours yesterday between 2 jobs.

The first job paid me $8.25 an hour and the second job was $8.15.

I’m not going to complain too much – the jobs are the easy, ‘stand-around’ types.

But still…that only comes out to $79.50 for those 10 hours of work…and less when you take out the taxes

If I worked those 10 hours 4 times a week, I’d make $318 and for the month I’d be making $1,272.

We know the living wage for a single adult is pegged at $13.21 an hour.

That comes out to $528 a week or $2,112 a month…or about $840 more a month that I’m making with the two jobs I pointed out.

But hold on – that living wage is for California. If you go by this calculator you find that Missoula’s living wage is just $11.07 an hour.

That’d still mean I’m coming up $341 a month short.

FYI…Billings’ living wage is listed as $10.19, Great Falls’ is $10.22, Flathead County is $10.05, and Lewis and Clark County is $11.12.

Now…this is just an example.

Both of those jobs I mentioned get me about 35 to 40 hours a month…if even that. They’re part-time jobs, and were advertised as such.

I didn’t expect to make a living with them, nor do I expect to in the future.

Once again, I just want to use my platform to tell you how hard it is to get by in America today.

I think all of our social and political problems stem from this.

In 2014 Pew Research told us that “For most workers, real wages have barely budged for decades.”

“But after adjusting for inflation, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power as it did in 1979, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms the average wage peaked more than 40 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 has the same purchasing power as $22.41 would today.”

I personally don’t know anyone that’s making $22.41 an hour here in Missoula.

I know of people that are making that much – some lawyers, politicians, doctors and even plumbers. You know…skilled trades.

Um…maybe we should exclude politicians from that ‘skilled trades’ category, eh?

That’s one of the biggest frustrations – no matter if it’s a D or an R…our wages haven’t gone up since the end of the Carter administration.

Another big problem were the 1986 tax rewrites put forth by Reagan and Senate Republicans, and supported by House Democrats.

This 1986 Tax Reform Act – the second of Reagan’s major tax reforms, the first having come in 1981 – wiped-away the gap between what workers and what investors paid in taxes.

It’s why today, billionaires pay the same marginal tax rate as someone making $40,000 a year.

And then there are the unions.

Just last month we were told that 16 million Americans belong to a union.

The Economic Policy Institute put out the report and told us that “union decline can explain one-third of the rise in wage inequality among men and one-fifth of the rise in wage inequality among women from 1973 to 2007.”

Just 9% of manufacturing workers now have union backing.

So we have a situation where rich people no longer pay as much in taxes as they used to, and workers don’t either.

Rich people manipulated politicians into doing their bidding, and that’s how they got their way.

Workers got screwed by losing jobs, losing union representation, and making less money as a result…which in turn paid Uncle Sam less money in taxes.

Back in 1979 – the year our wages went stagnant – our national debt was $827 billion. Today it’s $20.1 trillion.

In 1979 the federal government was spending $504 billion on things. In 2016 we spent $3.8 trillion.

Maybe employers would be able to pay workers more if they had more of their tax money and the government didn’t have it.

With big corporations, I think they have the money to pay workers more now.

But small businesses, like the one I worked for last night? I don’t really think so.

Maybe if they had a few extra thousand dollars a month, they could. Maybe if they didn’t have to pay an equal amount of payroll taxes to match each worker’s wage, they’d also be doing better.

Or maybe the best result will come from reducing taxes on the rich further, while decreasing worker wages further.

That works really well for 1% of this country, but it doesn’t help the 99% of us.

And it could be that there’s a painfully obvious result I’m totally missing.

Feel free to throw out your ideas, though I don’t think you or many others will.

I don’t think most of us have any ideas about what to do about this…and even if we did, there is no political will to carry them out.

Like I said – it’s frustrating.

Our Fragile State

8/9/2017

I’ve got about $10 to my name right now.

Next week I’ll have three paychecks coming to me - two on Wednesday and one on Friday.

Until then, though, it’s pinching pennies and eating the canned food on the top shelf.

When it comes to my finances, I’m pretty normal.

In fact, most Americans are just like me.

We have no savings, no retirement, and very little in our pockets. Sure, we work...but mostly we’re living paycheck to paycheck.

And I know I’m like most Americans because a book I’m reading right now lays out the stats to prove this.

It’s called The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty.

It came out in 2017, is about 175 pages, and was written by New York University professor of public policy and economics, Jonathan Morduch, and senior vice president at the Center for Financial Services Innovation, Rachel Schneider.

I encourage you to get a copy at your local library like I did.

As with most books, what makes this one so memorable are the stories.

We see common people working hard but still struggling to get by in America today.

For instance, a Pew Research poll of 7,000 people in 2014 showed that 92% of people would rather have stability over mobility...something that flies in the face of America’s typical “rags to riches mobility,” which enables people to move “up the income ladder.” (p 6)

So the authors had several families keep financial diaries for a year. A big reason for this was to study the PSID, or Panel Study of Income Dynamics. This measures things like “jobs lost and marriages unraveled, illnesses and disabilities...the kinds of catastrophic losses that transform lives.”

We have too many income swings in our population as well. A 2015 Pew poll showed that nearly half of respondents had gains or losses of income of 25% or more throughout the year.

One person the book profiles is Janice, an older woman that’s worked dealing cards in a Mississippi casino for 20 years. During the year she made $26,000 at her job, or about $1,000 a biweekly paycheck.

But that’s not quite accurate. When you graph Janice’s income you find that her highest paycheck was $1,200 and her lowest $900.

Most of that discrepancy comes from what Janice makes (or doesn’t make) in tips. A big part of that is dependent on the season, the local football schedule, and things like back-to-school time.

All cause people to spend less, and that means Janice makes less. That means she has to make tough choices, like skimping on medicine or going without food. And this is a woman that does everything right, including going to church every Sunday.

But she can’t get ahead, has never been able to get ahead.

And that is the story for countless Americans today.

It’s not just regular working folk like Janice and the others profiled in the book that are having problems.

Recently JPMorgan Chase studied 100,000 random accounts and 135 million transactions. They found that 55% of account holders had monthly income changes of 30% or more.

“There was no meaningful difference in the prevalence, amount, or range of income volatility among households with annual incomes between $23,000 and $100,000.” (p 32)

Clearly, big swings in monthly income are affecting the majority of Americans.

A big reason are the hours we work, with Americans often getting fewer than 40 hours a week...even with 3-4 jobs.

Another big reason is the “Great Risk Shift” that took place in the 1970s when “governments and businesses gradually shifted financial risks from their ledgers onto the shoulders of individuals and families.”

This in turn has led to today’s “Great Job Shift,” which is “a story mostly about how technology has shifted power, in this case from workers to employers.”

In 1960 around 25% of Americans worked in manufacturing, now it’s less than 10%. “Jobs in production, crafts, and repair, as well as clerical, administrative, and some sales jobs, are shrinking. In contrast, jobs in the service sector - food service, home health assistance, personal care, and private police jobs, as well as professional, technical, and managerial jobs - are growing.” (p 36)

Predictably, union membership has fallen as well. Back in 1983, 20% of American workers were in a union but in 2014 it was 11%...in the public sector. In the private sector, unions represent just 7% of American workers.

So as you can see, we’ve got serious problems with the nation’s workforce and their earnings.

Why?

There are so many problems in America today that it’s hard to list them all.

But what are the really big problems, the ones that often create all the others?

And let’s not get too complex, either - many of these were revealed to us millenia ago. We call them sins.

A big one is greed.

Greed is one of America’s biggest problems right now, one that’s contributing to the suffering and heartache of millions of families.

Employers don’t want to pay workers what their worth. Employees feel powerless to stand up to this.

Bankers don’t want to help people as much as they want to help themselves. People can do little in the face of this.

Politicians don’t care about helping the people that elected them, just the people that gave them tons of money to run. Voters can only grit their teeth and fume and say ‘next time,’...though next time never comes.

Despite that, I feel extremely confident.

We know there’ll come a time when the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

It’s coming.

Hell, we're already in World War III and have been for nearly 16 years now.

It started when the two mountains of brass came down. Remember, WWII started in China in 1931...not Europe in 1939 or Hawaii in 1941 like we often think.

I think it’s coming a lot sooner than you think.

Consider the eclipse this month. It hits on August 21 for a couple hours in the afternoon, with a peak around 11:30 AM.

You’ve been hearing a lot about that, and rightly so...it’s rare and fun and exciting.

But how about the major astrological event that’s coming up on September 23?

Oh, and if you were to actually dig into the true calendar of God that was abandoned around 350 BC you’d find that the date should actually be September 21.

Some call this the “Day of Trumpets.”

Many believe that’s when we’ll see the beginning of Revelations via a great sign in the sky, one that causes a war in Israel on the “Day of Trumpets.” That war will last 10 days, ending with Yom Kippur and the revelation of who the Almighty is as well as where the Ark of the Covenant is.

Personally, I’d like to see this.

I’d like to see fire and brimstone and the sinners of the world burning alive.

Most of them would be rich bankers, the 1% of the 1%.

Many of them would be our politicians in Washington, the people that claim to care about us.

Many of them would be the evil people that walk among us, lording it over us and making our lives a living hell.

For many, hell on earth is already here. The book I mentioned earlier profiles many of them, their struggles, and their constant anxiety and worry.

For a select few, earth feels like heaven. People like EPA-head Scott Pruitt, a man that clothes himself in the vestiges of religion on Sunday while doing everything he can to spoil God’s Creation the rest of the week.

Trump is one that’ll burn alive should things come to pass. He’s a skilled and talented charlatan, one that’s great at saying whatever needs to be said to ensure his rise continues while your life gets worse and worse.

For some reason people haven’t applied the age-old tale of the emperor wearing no clothes to Trump. He’s severely insecure, and his self-esteem is lower than that of a pimply-faced teenager who’s voice cracks every time he’s expected to talk.

Why on earth people are afraid of this man is beyond me. Eventually the day will come when he walks into a room and everyone points and laughs.

Yes, the emperor has no clothes and he’ll flee in red-faced embarrassment.

A big problem is that so few people in this country are confident enough to speak truth to power.

We do it on this site all the time.

Thanks for reading.

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